A Page from Sonwden’s Diary

March, 2012: I am finally out of meetings and sit down to accomplish real work when Phil, two desks over, intercepts a live phone sex: “Hey this guy in Oregon still calls his dick “a dong”!! Who does that anymore?!“, he screams into the sky laughing.

Soon half the staff is around Phil, listening to the call, and I am pushed out of my own cubicle. Phone sex parties start randomly here, the way free donoughts might attract a crowd at a normal office.

At a data level, this place is the Garden of Eden and everyone is biting the apple.

Thomas –three desks over– spies on all the other players in his Dungeons & Dragons League and says he has never lost since he knows exactly what they will do at each meeting . Chet, my supervisor, spies on the girls he’s dating. This has caused issues, when he’s inadvertently revealed personal information that he couldn’t possibly know.

When caught, Chet claims to be claireveonet. “Bear in mind, I don’t like to lie like this, I mean I despise psychics, but –if she’s got a good set of tits– I just can’t walk away. What can I say?- I’m a romantic, Ed“.

No one hear calls me Edward.

April 13th, 2012: the volume of data we process is so large, science hasn’t agreed upon a name for the units. We used to be storing at what’s called a yota-byte or 1 trillion terabytes but we exceeded that figure last week and there is now no name for the level we are at. Chet, our supriversor, has proposed calling them “pecker-bytes” to “let the terrorists know our dicks work, right Ed“.

I remind him its ‘Edward’. “Shit, I know that Snowy- what the forecast in your pants, by the way, 4 inches of pure white??.”

He does that joke daily.

June, 2012: the people at my level are jack asses; the people at the top are even worse. At the top, they are ex military who seem to be good men but they don’t understand the sophistication of these systems. The admiral in charge for example, doesn’t understand the distinction between twitter and blogs: “Ed, are the terrorists bloggering together?” –“What”– “Hahstaging and so on- we need to be monitoring this!”

Worse, he doesn’t just admit these shortcomings and lean on some one with a strong tech background. Instead, he tries to fake it. He speaks in the parlance of a young, tech-savvy person but gets all the terms wrong. For example, he doesn’t understand the difference between “but-dialing” some one, and a “booty call”.

“Ed, did I just booty call you from inside that meeting? Some times the phone falls into the back of my uniform and –hey everyone– I must have booty called, Big Ed over there”

I swear to Christ if they don’t start calling me Edward, I’m going to leak every last detail of this place.

August 13th, 2012: PRISM, our deep packet sniffer, has detected a major threat. A rouge cell, outside of Atlanta, is planning an attack of biblical proportions. We are fueling up the Blackhawks now. My doubts are starting to fade. Perhaps this system does make the
country more secure.

August 14th: we arrested a blues grass band. They were practicing a live set based off the Book of Deuteronomy and the lyrics coincide with one of our threat patterns. The operation cost 2 million dollars in helicopter refueling alone. But Chet, my supervisor, says it wasn’t a total waste because we at least know that PRISM is running and “the band had a female bassist with pretty decent tits, Ed”.

September, 2012: I was called into the Admiral’s office. Usually this means he’s heard of some new technology and wants to harvest it.
“Ed, have you heard of these Terror Hawks?” –what– “Yes, Terror Hawks. They attack wild boars. You lead them against the boars. Its a virtual
war, Ed“. After a few minutes, I realize he’s talking about the game, Angry Birds.

“Its a game for your phone, sir. Most the people I know who play it, only do so on the toilet”.

“Christ, Ed, empires are built on a toilet- we need to harvest this, post haste, Ed!”

October 5th, 2012: the data is so large that nothing gets done. Everyone only appears to look busy, going through the data.

I’m the only person giving actual updates in our status meetings. Most are just bullshitting, the word de jeer is “Nexus”. You can hide behind that word for months.

What am I doing?- I’m looking for nexuses.
I’m trying to develop an algorithm for finding nexuses within non-nexused data.
I think I found a nexus, in a nexus!

They also like to use daunting terms for the internet, “I’m inside the deep web!” or “I’m trying to catalogue the dark web!”

Jane was so hunger over the other day she couldn’t even think of a standard bullshit update, panicked and said she’s “working inside the Mariana Trench” which has nothing to do with technology and, I’m pretty sure, is just a giant hole in the ocean.

The Admiral of course bought it. “Marina Trench? That sounds scary as Hell. Why is this the first I’m hearing about it!“. And he put 4 more people on it, including me: “Eddie Boy! I need you on top of this. I can’t go back to Congress and say I wasn’t looking inside the Mariana Trench for terrorists!”

I look forward to the day that the American tax payers learn we actually searched for terrorists inside the Mariana Trench. If he doesn’t start calling me ‘Edward’ it might happen sooner than expected.